


Pull Me Like a Ripcord

by enigma731



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Banter, Developing Relationship, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Hand Jobs, Porn with Feelings, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-12 19:01:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11168106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731
Summary: They’re supposed to be here doing a job, only she and Peter have managed to fall into the belly of a carnivorous plant, getting drenched in its digestive juices. So now they’ve both been forced to abandon the rest of the team and make a run for the Milano in the hopes of washing the stuff off before the paralytic in it can take effect. Totally professional, really.Unfortunately the ship has only one shower.





	Pull Me Like a Ripcord

**Author's Note:**

> This might be the tropiest thing I've ever written and I'm not even sorry. 
> 
> With thanks to [invisibledaemon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/invisibledaemon/works) for beta and lots of head pats while I was writing this.

“Nine minutes,” says Peter, narrowly avoiding getting hit in the face by a low-hanging branch as he glances down at his holopad to check the time. They’ve been all-out sprinting for nearly a mile, and he’s flushed and breathing hard. 

“Can you move any faster?” asks Gamora, though her own lungs are burning. 

“Sure,” he pants, tripping on a root and doing a series of odd hops before regaining his balance, “if you wanna carry me.”

“That will slow us both down,” she points out, wondering whether the slight light-headedness she’s feeling is the result of exertion or the rapid-acting neurotoxin they’re currently both covered in. 

They’re supposed to be here doing a job, only she and Peter have managed to fall into the belly of a carnivorous plant, getting drenched in its digestive juices. To be fair, _she_ was the one who accidentally fell into the trap, for once. He’d jumped in after her with some harebrained idea that she needed saving, so now they’ve both been forced to abandon the rest of the team and make a run for the Milano in the hopes of washing the stuff off before the paralytic in it can take effect. Totally professional, really.

Fortunately the familiar bright colors of their ship come into view a moment later through the thick jungle underbrush. Peter has the back open immediately, and they both manage to stumble aboard.

“Eleven minutes,” he gasps. “How long you think we have?”

She shakes her head. “Not enough left that I want to find out.”

The next problem, of course, is that the Milano has only one bathroom with a single shower stall. That’s just one of the many reasons it’s been a relief to have the Quadrant as their main living space, but right now it’s several dozen jumps away and she doesn’t feel like trusting Kraglin to get it here in time. 

“You go first with the shower,” she tells Peter, who’s trying to struggle out of his jacket. 

He shakes his head. He’s still out of breath, and the wet leather’s become sticky, trapping his arms. “I’ll let you--”

Gamora grabs both sleeves and yanks the whole thing off, letting it land in a pile on the floor. “No. Your physiology is--”

“Fragile,” he interrupts. “Yeah, I got that the last half dozen times you said it. But last time I checked, you’ve got a nervous system same as I do. _And_ you’ve got a faster metabolism so it could totally affect you first.”

“I will be fine as long as you’re quick,” she tells him, though she has to admit that her fingers feel clumsy as she unclips her sword from her belt.

“I’m not going in there and leaving you out here to maybe stop breathing,” says Peter, pulling his shirt over his head and dropping it on top of his jacket.

“Fine,” she decides. “Then we’ll go together.”

Peter freezes so suddenly that for a moment she thinks the toxin’s finally kicked in. “You--want us to shower _together_?”

“Yes,” Gamora says curtly, pulling down the zipper at the front of the vest she’s wearing and then shrugging it off. “Unless you’d rather keep arguing about it until we both get poisoned.”

He doesn’t respond to that in words, but he doesn’t protest either. What he does do is stand there gaping like a fish out of water as she finishes undressing, still half-clothed himself.

“Peter?” she prompts, as she slips past him to turn on the shower. She’s starting to get legitimately concerned about him, given that they’ve both been marinating in the toxin for at least fifteen minutes, and now he seems to have forgotten how to function.

“What?” he asks, still not moving, but apparently breathing well enough to talk.

“The shower.” Gamora decides that he isn’t going to get anywhere but sick by his own devices, so she moves back over to him and reaches for his belt buckle. “You’re going to need to take the rest of your clothes off.”

He practically jumps back at that, as though she might have pulled a knife or punched him in the stomach. “I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” 

He fumbles clumsily but does eventually manage to get his belt and pants undone. He shoves them down his hips along with his boxers, only then realizing that he’s failed to remove his boots first. 

“Dammit,” he growls as he raises one foot to unfasten the buckles and nearly falls over in a heap.

Gamora catches him by the shoulder, holds him up wordlessly as he finally manages to get all the way down to bare skin from head to toe. 

“Come on,” she orders, practically hauling him into the shower in front of her. 

He stumbles but makes it in, sputtering a bit as the spray hits him. 

The Milano’s shower is small--a glass-walled stall that’s a comfortable fit for one person but decidedly cozy with two--but fortunately has excellent water pressure that’s distributed evenly from a head in the ceiling. The effect is a lot like being enveloped in a warm, wet cocoon, which is exactly what they need right now to get the digestive juices off of them as quickly as possible.

For the first few minutes in the shower, her mind goes into survival mode. She loses track of Peter as she washes the sticky poison from her face, from her shoulders and chest, all the way down to the bottoms of her feet, just to be safe. Her hair is practically saturated with the stuff too, has managed to drink it up like a particularly annoying sponge, and she lets her eyes fall closed as she lathers shampoo into it. Her shoulders begin to relax under the comforting heat of the spray, and the realization that her skin is no longer tingling with the first portents of a reaction. She loses track of time while she works her fingers through her curls, carefully untangling them and ensuring that she isn’t missing any of the digestive goo. When she opens her eyes again with a thought toward grabbing the bottle of conditioner she still keeps here, she finds Peter looking hesitantly at her over his shoulder, his back still mostly turned.

He flushes deep red the moment she catches him looking, and turns his gaze quickly back to the wall in front of him. “Sorry, I--Sorry.”

Gamora allows herself to consider him--at first because she needs to be sure that he’s been able to do his part of decontaminating himself, needs to be sure that he isn’t about to go into respiratory failure in front of her. He seems to be doing fine besides the embarrassment, though, and it’s then that the reality of this situation begins to sink in. She is in the shower, naked, with Peter, who is just as naked as she is. Now that neither of them is imminently dying, it occurs to her how undeniably intimate this really is. All at once the thoughts she’s spent the past few weeks trying to suppress slam back into her mind--all of the times he’s made her laugh, the awkward, peculiar kindness he shows her, what it had felt like to believe he was lost. How admitting that there _is_ a thing between them has not exactly made it any easier to _act_ on the thing. At least, so far.

Not to mention how undeniably _good_ he looks right now. She’s seen Peter without a shirt plenty of times before, has even briefly seen him stripped all the way down to boxers when he’s getting into his bunk at night. But she’s never been quite this _close_ before, and he’s never been quite so exposed. Now she finds her gaze drawn to the corded muscles of his shoulders and back, rippling slightly as he breathes, down to the dip of his waist, the edge of a hipbone where his torso is twisted toward her. Her eyes come to rest on the swell of his ass, strong like the rest of him and yet tantalizingly smooth. Heat rises behind her sternum, in her cheeks, nothing at all to do with the steam from the shower. Sorcery indeed, she thinks, though she’s long since given up blaming her undeniable attraction on any attempts at manipulation on his part. This desire comes entirely from her own head and heart, grudging though she may be to admit it. 

Peter clears his throat, perhaps sensing her gaze, and she snaps her attention back up to the nape of his neck. “Um. Could you pass me the soap?”

“Yes,” she says quickly, picking up the bar from one of the built-in shelves and attempting to pass it over to him. 

He gropes for it blindly behind his back, grasps it briefly before promptly dropping it to the floor of the shower. 

“Shit,” he yelps, attempts to bend down and get it, then seems to realize that move will effectively put his backside in her face. He straightens again quickly, apparently giving up.

Gamora stoops and retrieves the soap, holding it out for a long moment before realizing that his attention’s focused somewhere else. “Peter?”

He stiffens but still doesn’t turn, or make any move to meet her eyes. “Huh?”

“The soap,” she tells him, touching his back lightly with her knuckles to let him know where it is. 

He jumps instead, nearly knocks it down again, until she takes hold of his hand and forcibly presses the bar into it. 

“Are you okay?” she asks, watching over his shoulder as he takes the soap and stares at it like he suddenly doesn’t know how it’s supposed to be used.

“Fine,” he says quickly, finally deciding to lather up and start washing himself off in earnest. “Fine, why?”

Gamora shrugs. “You’re being--weird. Weirder than usual.”

“It’s a weird situation,” says Peter, washing his face and then tipping his head upward to rinse it off, so that he still doesn’t have to turn toward her.

“Yes,” she allows, “but--I’m worried about you. Are you sure you’re--”

“I’m _fine_ ,” he snaps, then blows out a breath. “Sorry.” He’s finished with the soap now, but he doesn’t seem to know what to do with it, since its original position is on the shelf behind her. He looks around, then tries to balance it in a miniscule amount of space beside a bottle of shampoo. 

Predictably, the soap immediately slides back down to the floor again. Sighing, Gamora retrieves it one last time and puts it back in its home.

“Peter,” she says finally, deciding that they definitely need to break this tension in one way or another. Preferably one that doesn’t end up making things even more frustrating. “Turn around and look at me.”

He stays still for a long time, taking slow, shaky breaths as though trying to steady himself for a battle. When he finally does turn, he’s flushed bright red again all the way down to his navel. His hair is plastered flat by the water pressure, one errant curl pointing down the middle of his forehead toward his nose. He can’t quite meet her eyes despite her request, and he’s keeping one hand splayed over his groin, though it doesn’t even come close to adequately hiding his undeniable erection. 

She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him look quite so ashamed, or quite so vulnerable, and all she wants to do is reach out and touch him, make him understand that all the desires he’s been trying to mask are completely welcome.

“Fuck,” he breathes, bringing his other hand up to scrub the heel of it across his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m not trying to pressure you or be a creep--”

“Peter,” she attempts to interrupt, but he barrels on with the apology.

“It’s just, you’re here, and you’re naked, and I couldn’t--”

“Peter,” she tries again, with no more luck than the first time.

“I’m gonna get out,” he says, too quickly. “I’m good now, with the poison thing, so I’ll just go and--” He doesn’t finish his sentence, reaches for the shower door, and she realizes then that he might actually bolt without engaging in conversation at all.

“Stop,” she says firmly, catching his wrist and holding him there, just inches from her. 

He goes still, looking at her utterly adrift, hers to do with whatever she pleases. She carefully takes his other hand, pulls it away from his body--which makes his breath hitch--and laces their fingers. Then she takes two steps forward, leans in and kisses him, takes in the desperate noise he makes at the back of his throat in the half-second before he’s kissing her back. She immediately finds herself breathless too, swept away by the intensity of this unexpected moment, his hands grasping both of hers tightly, his erection hot and hard where it’s pressed against her stomach, desire of her own pooling there. 

“Hey,” she says softly, when she pulls away at last, “I admitted that there is a thing. When _are_ we going to do something about it?”

He swallows visibly, his voice half an octave lower than usual when he manages to speak again. “Um, now? Please tell me you’re suggesting now.”

“Yes,” says Gamora. “Now.” 

She disentangles one of her hands from his and touches his cheek lightly before running it down his side to rest against his flank. He shudders under her touch, his hips jumping despite the fact that he’s clearly trying to tamp down his reactions. She kisses him again, more slowly this time, willing him to relax, to feel the permission that she’s offering. Peter groans into her mouth again, closes his eyes and tangles his fingers in her hair. They linger like that for a long moment, and when he finally breaks contact to catch his breath, she ducks her head to trace the line of his neck with her lips, finds the spot where his pulse is fluttering wildly. He shifts, not quite grinding against her hip. He must be in agony, she thinks, to be so passive, to be letting her have such complete control. She isn’t used to that from Peter--she knows that he’s insecure, in his own ways, but she’s never seen him this restrained, this _hesitant_. Taking half a step backward, she slips a hand down between them, wraps her palm around his dick.

Peter gasps at the contact, but stills her with two fingers on her wrist. “Wait. Wait a minute, okay?”

Gamora frowns, pulls her hand away and studies him. “If you don’t want this--”

He cuts her off with a half-strangled sound, wraps his own hand around himself, as though that’s the only way he can manage to form coherent thoughts at this point. “I do. _Fuck_ , I want it so bad. I just--I don’t want our first time to be--” He breaks off, gestures helplessly at the air with his free hand. “ _This_.”

She considers that, then laughs, because there really is no denying how absurd this whole thing’s become. “Okay, fair. But--” She gives a half-nod toward the general vicinity of his crotch. “How about I at least help you with that?”

He makes a face like something inside of his skull might have physically broken, then nods vigorously. “Yes. Yes, _please_.”

Gamora doesn’t make him ask twice or wait any longer, just braces one palm against the flat of his back and takes his cock in the other. He hisses through his teeth, a full-body tremor running through him before she’s even started moving. 

“Tell me what feels good,” she says as she strokes the length of him once, then again, slowly.

“Anything,” he breathes, looking down at her with pupils blown wide open, face flushed in an entirely different way than before. “Seriously, anything.”

Gamora gives him half a smile, rolls her eyes fondly as she experiments with a bit more pressure, a bit more speed, deciding that she’ll just have to read his reactions for herself. He lets his eyes fall closed as she finds a rhythm, shifts closer to her and buries his face in her shoulder, his breath already fast and ragged. He rocks his hips forward harder with each stroke, positively _whimpers_ when she twists her wrist.

“Gamora,” he gasps, the vibrations of his voice rumbling under the hand she has on his back, “Gamora, I’m not gonna--I can’t-- _god_ ”

“Stop thinking,” she tells him. “Just enjoy it.”

She’s barely been touching him for a minute, she thinks, but already he’s losing his rhythm, moving wildly against her in search of release. He comes with a shout a few seconds later, the sound half-muffled against her neck. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, but she ignores him, shifts his weight so she can keep one arm around his back, her fingers carding through the hair at the nape of his neck as his breathing slowly returns to something approaching normal.

After a few minutes that feel much longer, he straightens and finally meets her eyes again. “That was, like, pretty much the hottest thing ever. And also _really_ embarrassing.”

Gamora gives him her best faux-earnest look. “You mean--” She breaks off, gestures at the air between them the way he did a short while ago. “-- _this_ isn’t typical for Terrans?”

Peter snorts. “Fortunately not. Although if you need a lesson in Earth biology--”

“You’ll give me one sometime?” she interrupts. “How generous of you.”

He shrugs, his easy, good humor returning now that he’s apparently got some blood circulating again. “What can I say? I’m a giver.”

Gamora brushes back her hair, which has gotten tangled again, and tries to figure out where this goes next. She’d been hoping to break the tension between them, and maybe she has, at least for him. Now, though, she can’t deny the way she’s practically aching to be touched, or even to touch herself while imagining the hand is his. She’ll take what she can get at this point, though the idea of simply finishing the shower and moving on as though none of this has happened is unappealing at best. 

Still, he hasn’t said anything further or made any move to touch her, so she decides that maybe this really _is_ as far as they’re ready to go for the day and starts to reach for the bottle of conditioner that she never did get to use.

“Hey,” says Peter, catching her wrist and turning her back toward him. “Did you really think I was gonna leave you hanging like that?”

“You waited long enough,” she gripes, though she can’t really bring herself to be too irritated with him. Not when he’s looking at her with such earnest enthusiasm, anyway.

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head at himself. “Sorry, but you kinda blew my mind.”

“Oh,” she says dryly, “is _that_ where Terrans keep their minds?”

He rolls his eyes and wraps an arm around her shoulders, meeting her gaze for a second before hauling her closer. “Come here,” he orders, then kisses her again, taking his time to explore now.

She lets him move her the way he wants, for once, leaning into the kiss and nipping at his lip gently.

“God, you’re stunning,” he breathes as he pulls back, taking her in fully for the first time. He runs a hand down her side, making her shiver, then brings it back up to gently thumb her nipple.

“Peter,” she whispers, surprised by the sudden rush of emotion that stirs. It isn’t like his feelings for her have been a secret, exactly--his eyes practically broadcast them every time he looks at her, but the novelty of it still surprises her somehow. She is accustomed to being seen as a weapon, as an asset, as a commodity for her masters to shape and use as they please. By contrast, Peter’s affection--the near- _reverence_ \--he shows toward her is overwhelming.

“What?” he asks very softly, reaching up to touch her cheek.

For a moment all she can do is swallow against the sudden tightness in her throat, choke on all the things she’s been keeping safely under wraps for the past two months. She wants to tell him in explicit terms--that she would die for him, that he makes her want to take every risk she’s been carefully trained against for years, that he feels more like home than anything she has known since childhood. Still, the words won’t come, so she decides to save them for another day, soon.

She clears her throat. “Were you going to return the favor or just tease?”

He considers for a moment, then carefully cups the back of her thigh. “Lift this leg for me?”

He probably means to rest on his hip, or perhaps against the shower wall, she knows. She also knows she can do far better than that, though, and that she thoroughly enjoys the look on his face whenever she does things that would be physically impossible for a Terran. Gamora does as he’s asked and then some, extending her leg upward until her ankle rests perfectly comfortably on his shoulder.

“Holy--” he breathes, his eyes suddenly so wide that she wonders for at least the third time today whether his brain’s actually shorted out. 

She arches an eyebrow. “That work for you?”

Peter nods vigorously. “Yeah. Yeah, this’ll work.”

“Good,” she says sweetly, giving him a wicked smile.

He strokes the length of her bare leg first, as though he still can’t quite believe she’s managed to get it _there_. She gives him another appraising look, a question without words, and he laughs and shrugs. 

“Damn,” he mutters, as he runs his palm down her side, coming to rest on the curve of her hip. “Damn, you are so gonna break me one of these days.”

“Did you need instructions?” she teases, noticing the way he’s still a bit flushed, the way his hair’s plastered down again, and the way those odd imperfections make her heart swell, make her want him all the more.

“Actually,” says Peter, finally touching between her legs, just tracing the exquisitely sensitive skin there with a fingertip first, still enough contact to make her shudder. “Actually, tell me what you like, yeah.”

“That’s a good start,” she tells him, resting one forearm on his shoulder so she can tilt her hips forward more, giving him a better angle.

His skin is slightly cool against hers, she notices, though not unpleasantly. It heightens her sense of him, somehow, especially under the heat of the shower spray. He begins to tease with a single finger, slipping it into her slowly and watching her reactions. She doesn’t think she’s ever had anyone study her so intently, pay so much attention to her needs.

“Good,” she says again, as he adds a second finger and begins to find a rhythm, leaning in to kiss her as he does. 

She hasn’t expected this to be slow, hasn’t expected him to be gentle, in part because of his earlier desperation, but also because she is simply unaccustomed to softness in her life. She rocks her hips forward to meet him as his thumb finds her clit, registering for the first time the size of his hand, the way his whole palm’s practically pressed against her as she moves. 

He bears down once, hard, with the pad of his thumb, which draws a gasp and a groan from her, makes her whole body jump. Peter grins like he’s just won some kind of prize and backs off again, drawing tantalizing little circles around the edges of her clit as he continues fucking her with his fingers.

“Proud of yourself?” she asks, though his touch is making her light-headed again, in an entirely different way than the poison did earlier. She leans back against the wall of the shower, and he takes it as an invitation to move his free hand back to her breast, teasing her nipple the same maddening way he’s doing with her clit.

“Nah,” says Peter. “I’m naked in the shower with the girl of my dreams. I’m just happy.” 

Gamora opens her mouth to respond, but then he curls the fingers inside of her upward, pinches her nipple at the same time, and her voice breaks into a needy whine.

He gives her an absolute smirk at that. “Okay, maybe a _tiny_ bit proud that I can get the deadliest woman in the galaxy to make noises like _that_.”

“Well,” she manages, though her breath’s coming in short gasps now, “I know _I’m_ feeling pretty great about the fact that I made the legendary Star-Lord lose his mind in under a minute.”

Peter flushes crimson again and redoubles his efforts. He ducks his head forward, maybe to hide his blush, but the contrast of his lips drawing a line of soft kisses against her neck and the rough brush of his stubble against her shoulder is intoxicating, so she’s certainly not about to complain. She lets her head fall to the side to give him better access, exhales another hum of appreciation. 

He’s still working her with his fingers, her orgasm beginning to build low in her abdomen. Peter tightens the circles around her clit until he’s right on it with each movement, waves of warmth washing through her as she rocks her hips up to meet him faster and harder. There’s nothing slow or gentle about it now, but the sweetness is still there somehow--his lips against her throat, his shoulder firm and solid under her hand, the sense of impossible safety that always seems to envelope her in his presence. She closes her eyes as she comes, lets go and trusts him to take care of her.

Gamora loses track of time for a stretch after that, lets him direct her as he will, but when she comes back to herself, she has both feet back on the floor again, her head rested on his shoulder and his fingers in her hair. 

“Wow,” he says softly, when she looks up at him and tries to find her voice.

“Isn’t that my line?” asks Gamora, straightening slowly. The shower is still running, and she’s starting to feel cold, but there isn’t a moment of this she can bring herself to regret.

“I dunno,” says Peter, reaching past her to turn the water off, and pressing a light kiss to her forehead. “Think I’m gonna need a reprise to figure that out. Preferably on a bed.”

“I think that can be arranged.” She steps out of the shower, grabs a towel before turning back over her shoulder. “And Peter?”

He holds up both hands. “Let me guess--If I tell anyone about this, you’ll kill me?”

Gamora gives him her most smug look. “No. I was going to say ‘it’s about time.’”

**Author's Note:**

> Visit me [on tumblr](http://enigma731.tumblr.com/) for more feelings and other nonsense.


End file.
